Traditionally, a user who wished to access functional capabilities provided by a given software application would install that application on a given computing system. Afterwards, the user could execute and run that software application as he or she saw fit, more or less on a stand-alone basis. However, over time, these software applications evolved, enabling multiple users to collaborate on a given document, without being limited to using a single computing system. Instead, these multiple users receive their own copies of the given document, as maintained locally on their own computing systems, and make edits to their local copies. Periodically, these edits to the local copies of the shared document are synchronized, so that all users may see what other users are doing in the shared document.